Sunday, June 14, 2009

Obama, please help us, they are killing our young children.

Yesterday Marc Ambinder reported that "White House officials say they worry about the stability of Iran during a protracted post-vote period of uncertainty." The people of Iran might hope for a little more from the administration than concerns about stability. The NIAC blog reports:

According to our private phone conversations with people in Tehran, hundreds of parents have gathered by a police station in Yousef Abad, now known as Seyyed Jamal Aldin Asad Abadi, with their hands raised to the sky saying “Obama, please help us, they are killing our young children.” They were gathering there because their kids are missing and they were trying to find out where they are.

It's hard not to see a parallel here between candidate Obama's slow response to last summer's crisis in Georgia and his administration's reluctance to wade into the Iranian election, presumably for fear of driving the opposition into the arms of the regime. But wasn't Obama's election supposed to restore America's moral authority precisely so that the United States government could use soft power and diplomacy in a situation like this? What is Obama doing to help those who are seeking change in Iran? Or has opposition to regime change morphed into support for stability, even if that means support for Ahmadinejad?